¡Comienza La Reconquista! (The Reconquista is Beginning!)
Our third adventure begins in El Bigote's prison cell. A prison guard opens his cell and calls out to a clean-shaven "Gonzalo," the birth name he'd rather forget. He tells the guard that no one calls him Gonzalo and lives, at which the guard laughs and tells the scoundrel to get to court. The guard advises Gonzalo not to plan anything, given that his Terrible Giants are arriving separately. The scene then cuts to El Bigote and three very demoralised Terrible Giants appearing before a judge. The judge declares one Gonzalo Gonzales de Guzmán and his three Terrible Giants to be guilty of several counts of theft and murder, and he sentences them to hanging at noon. We then see their hanging taking place - special 3-metre gallows have been created for the Terrible Giants. The nooses are placed around the necks of Gonzalo and his Terrible Giants, and as soon as they choke to death, the Fuego Azul leaps from their bodies and floats into the sky. Meanwhile, our heroes (minus El Serpiente Negro, who wasn't much of a hero anyway) are being inducted into the Army of the Republic of Gran Colombia. Even Chico gets a uniform for the top half of his large feline body. After the beginning formalities, Sergeant Rojas "welcomes" the troops into the local brand of the Army, requiring all the soldiers to begin and end every response to him with "Señor" (Sir). Sergeant Rojas calls: El Tigre de Plata "Plátano" (banana), saying that he's "soft as a banana"; Rascar Capac "Indio" for his Native American features; and Adán "Hombre Mecánico" (Mechanical Man). He mocks Chico by saying that the Army doesn't need a pet, to which Chico replies, "I'm not a pet. I'm a soldier." He can't think of a nickname for Chico because he's amazed that the Fuego Azul could give a cat such a large stature, to say nothing of the powers of speech or psychic abilities. He then refers the troops to Corporal Muñoz, a somewhat absent-minded but effective training officer with a reputation for being less intelligent than he actually is. The troops then accompany Corporal Muñoz to the training site. At the training site, Corporal Muñoz puts our heroes through their superpower paces, but in the end he gets more paces than he bargained for. He starts by asking all four heroes individually (in turn) to lift a large boulder; El Tigre de Plata and Rascar Capac both lift it with seeming ease, whereas Adán's mechanical powers fail him and Chico's telekinesis only manages to lift the boulder a few centimetres off the ground (after having already failed once and being sent to eat a full meal of cat food in order to concentrate better). Seeing this, he shouts "¡Muy impresionante!" ("Very impressive!") to the first two, and he then expresses disappointment in the other two. The Corporal's next task for them is to take down Armando, a soldier with the power of self-levitation; as soon as they disappear into the field, El Tigre de Plata manages to spot Armando and jump high enough to catch him off guard and use his body to break the fall. Deciding that this was too easy a task for the heroes, the Corporal then calls upon four soldiers with various powers to go against the heroes. The soldier with the power of fire (hereafter known as Fuego) attempts to set rings of fire to trap the heroes, but he just ends up burning some of the foliage; El Tigre de Plata manages to knock him about a bit, and in the end all too well. Meanwhile, Adán attempts to go after Fuego without success. The soldier with the power of lightning (hereafter known as Relámpago) strikes Rascar Capac with his lightning power, but the only effect is that Capac's shirt is partially burnt. Next the soldier with the power to dematerialise and rematerialise at will (hereafter known as Atravesado) dives for El Tigre de Plata, but El Tigre de Plata's acrobatic skills are far too good and he rolls out of the way of Atravesado; caught by surprise, Atravesado doesn't dematerialise in time and he crashes headlong into a Palo Verde tree. The soldier with the power to stretch his body (hereafter known as Elástico) goes straight after Rascar Capac and manages to wrap himself around Capac's torso in much the same way that a Boa Constrictor would do. Not wanting to be at the mercy of Elástico, Capac temporarily frees himself and even manages to slam Elástico's head into the ground. The fight doesn't last much longer, though. Although Elástico constricts Rascar Capac another time and Atravesado temporarily gets himself stuck in the middle of Capac's torso whilst trying to dematerialise through and behind him: Chico uses telekinesis to reflect Relámpago's lightning bolt back onto him, knocking him out; Adán shoots Fuego in both shoulders; and El Tigre de Plata throws Fuego at a rock, thus knocking his head into the rock and knocking him unconscious, with enough bleeding to alarm our heroes. After Atravesado frees himself from Rascar Capac's body, El Tigre de Plata intimidates Atravesado and Elástico into finishing the exercise, pointing out (quite rightly) that this was meant to be a training exercise and not a duel to the death. El Tigre de Plata and Rascar Capac carry the unconscious soldiers back to base and tell Corporal Muñoz that the two soldiers need urgent medical care; he orders two privates to get them to the medic. After the training exercise gone wrong, a group of nuns from the local convent come to bless the soldiers. Enter Hermana Lucita, a nun distinguished by her youthful, almost seductive, face. She first says hello to Chico, who responds in kind, tells her he's actually a soldier, and ask her for cuddles. She appears shocked by Chico's ability to speak until he explains to her that his powers of speech and his large size are the result of mutations caused by the Fuego Azul. Corporal Muñoz notices Hermana Lucita on her own and talking to Chico and asks if there's a problem; she nervously tells him of her confusion at Chico's ability to speak and promises to be on her way. After she starts walking away, Chico becomes suspicious and starts accessing her memories and discovers she isn't quite what she appears to be. She notices him probing her mind and orders him to stop, promising the consequences will be great. He refuses, suspecting her of hiding some even greater and more dangerous truth. In order to cover her tracks, Hermana Lucita starts accusing Chico of being a gato diablo (devil cat) for his powers of speech and psychic probing, but first she has to explain this to her Superiora ''(Mother Superior), who very anxiously wants to know why she just separated herself from the group. Shocked, her ''Superiora informs her fellow nuns, who begin to spread the word amongst the soldiers alongside Hermana Lucita. Eventually the soldiers are divided evenly between scepticism of the nuns' claims and the belief and fear that Chico really *is* a gato diablo. Concerned for Chico's safety, El Tigre de Plata takes Corporal Muñoz to one side and quietly raises his suspicions about the young nun spreading the false word that Chico is somehow a gato diablo. Corporal Muñoz then makes an announcement to the soldiers and nuns alike that if there's any belief that Chico is indeed a gato diablo, then they should get one of their Monsignors to perform an exorcism. Fearing that her cover will be blown and the truth about her discovered too quickly, Hermana Lucita recommends a "Monsignor" whom she knows personally (and who, unbeknownst to the gathered crowd, is one of her contacts). Instead, the Superiora states that the Archbishop of the Diocese of Tenochtitlán is the man best qualified and most appropriate for the job, and that one of the other nuns will bring him to the Army base. Some of the soldiers are baffled by this, saying that Chico has nothing wrong with him, whilst others are still paranoid of what they believe to be the gato diablo. The two factions of soldiers are on the verge of fighting one another, when El Tigre de Plata manages to intimidate them into stopping the fight as such a fight would do Gran Colombia no favours. Meanwhile, Rascar Capac has an idea. He prays to Inti, the Inca Sun god, to show himself to the nuns as the Christian god in order to convince them that Chico is indeed not evil. Having overheard this prayer, however, Hermana Lucita claims to her fellow nuns that she has just had a vision of the Devil masquerading as the Christian god; as soon as she says this, however, Inti shows up in a form of white light, disguised as the Christian god, and convinces even Hermana Lucita that Chico is blessed and has a purpose in fighting for the good of Gran Colombia. Inti further admonishes Hermana Lucita for her lack of faith, and she's forced into a public act of contrition, saying that she wasn't sure about Chico given that he could talk, and that she's now sorry for having doubted Chico. Having seen the display, the Archbishop is thoroughly convinced that Chico is blessed and will fight for the good of Gran Colombia, and that no exorcism is needed. Once he relays this to everyone, Hermana Lucita asks her Superiora ''to go to a Monsignor whom she knows and trust in order to confess her sins. At first her ''Superiora ''isn't convinced that this will do any good, but Hermana Lucita manages to persuade her to the contrary. The ''Superiora lets her go. Soon after, Corporal Muñoz gives his soldiers leave for the evening, provided they return by 10PM. Our heroes decide to follow Hermana Lucita. At first they lose her trail, but Rascar Capac notices her out of the corner of his eye and the heroes soon follow after her. After she's cornered, Hermana Lucita at first prepares for a fight she'll probably lose, but a stray beam of the Fuego Azul hits her; as a result, she feels her Gran Colombian roots in spite of her strong resolve, and the desire to fight for the Reconquista overwhelms her. At this point she starts speaking perfect British English and admits that her real name is Lucía Hernandez, and that she was taken from Gran Colombia at birth and placed with a British American family with Gran Colombian roots. Over the years, she admits, she was trained to be a British spy amongst a network operating in Tenochtitlán. She further admits that President Juarez is the spy network's prime target, especially in light of the recent talk of Reconquista. She agrees to follow the heroes under the pretext of blessing the soldiers on the move, and that she'll make this pretext clear to the spy network in order to keep their trust. Although the heroes are shocked, they agree to have her on the team. Soon Lucía must deal with the complications of being a double agent, especially given the nascent conflict between her upbringing and her roots. This complicated web of intrigue will be explored in a future episode, appropriately titled El Paso Doble (The Double-Step).